When you hear the words "comparative advantage" in the context of international trade, most of the time it means "dirt cheap labor because of few / poorly enforced labor protections".

There's really no reason why we shouldn't have steel mills aside from that.

▲

mothballed a day ago | parent [-]

Can you explain why building more American steel mills would improve labor or even the human condition for the Chinese? It would be great if things were better for the common man there, but them having the comparative advantage at being dirt cheap is not an envious position I would imagine anyone is rationally wanting to change places with, especially if you change that to "me" vs "other guy."

What's more likely, as I stated in another comment, is if you destroy their comparative advantage at a tariffed industry, the Chinese guy that had the steel mill as his best option now has to move to the next even shittier one. Tariffs are usually economically worse than zero-sum.

	▲	int_19h a day ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not suggesting that tariffs are the answer here - especially as enacted - but at the same time, people defending "free trade" (which is anything but given that the movement of labor across borders is very much not free) should be cognizant of what it is exactly they are saying when using cliches such as "comparative advantage". To answer the broader question, if you believe in markets at all, then demand creates supply, and supply for cheap (and therefore abused) labor is arguably at least in part responsible for economies like China being so shitty to your average worker. If all Western countries would e.g. slap tariffs on goods imported from places with poor labor rights, but they were specifically contingent on that (and not just a list of countries that our Great Leader has a problem with), that would put the pressure on the Chinese government to raise the standards to remain competitive. That would be the kind of tariff I would support, and I don't buy the argument that if we don't allow for such shitty jobs, the alternatives would be even worse - this is exactly the kind of attitude that creates a global race to the bottom that is the major driver for enshittification all around.